The year was 1928. The place was Arkansas. Charles Lee Smith, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism was arrested “on charges of blasphemy.” His crime? Passing out atheist tracts in a local town. After spending one night in jail, Smith was released with one charge dismissed while the other was never set for trial. Just like the famous blasphemy trial of C.B. Reynolds decades earlier, Mr. Smith was just one more victim of the American legal system, hijacked by Christianity.

Inoculation

The year was 1722. The date, July 8th. The place, St. Andrew’s Church in London, England. A bold, determined preacher walked up to his pulpit and delivered a heartfelt sermon entitled, “Against the Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation.” The sermon was published and became widely famous. His text, Job 2:7, “So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.” His contention, that Job was suffering from Smallpox (the epidemic of the time) and yet he endured it, and therefore, so should Christians the onslaught of Smallpox in his day. The masses took this advice. Smallpox killed and maimed and ravaged hundreds of thousands of people. It spread and spread some more. The new and experimental scientific practice of inoculation was an abomination, which the preachers proclaimed, “usurped God’s providential authority.” This preacher was none other than the Rev. Edmund Massey, who pleaded from the bottom of his heart, along with scores of Catholic and Protestant church leaders everywhere, not to tolerate the “diabolical operation.” God wanted man to suffer for his sins and to endure his punishment, so said University of Cambridge’s, Reverend Ramsden no less vigorously. He and other Bostonians formed the Anti-Vaccination Society in 1798. The result, an incredible death toll among both Catholics and Protestants, particularly the Catholics, some of whom almost came to bloodshed out of the pious desire to trust in God and not let some physicians make the procedure mandatory…

“Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:” (James 5:14)

“And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.” (2 Chron. 16:12)

So there you have it – God does not recommend amoxicillin! It is not hard to see what God wants us to do when we’re sick. Very few dissenting voices expressed themselves, until later when yet a greater number of lives were lost because of this foolish zeal.

Bruno

February 17, 1600. Giordano Bruno, an Italian philosopher, astronomer, ex-priest, and freethinker, was burned at the stake for the crime of heresy. His Copernicanism, Arianism, his contentions that all churches should tolerate their schismatic disagreements, along with his somewhat materialistic beliefs that the universe was infinite and contained many worlds, could not be tolerated. He really crossed the line when he decided Jesus was nothing more than a skillful magician! Talking like that back then would get you killed. Bruno’s defiance and distinct individuality made him seas of enemies. On May 22, 1592, he was arrested, and by January of 1593, his trial, which lasted almost 7 years, began. He was tortured and delivered up to be killed, repudiating images of the cross along the way. Lest any be seduced by his heretical words, a large spike was driven through his jaw, just after proclaiming his last words. He then painfully awaited his silent consummation by fire. Giordano was a man bigger than the time in which he lived. The world was not worthy.

Servetus

The year was 1553. On October 27th, Michael Servetus was burned at the stake for the crime of heresy. He committed serious “crimes,” disbelieving in the trinity, dabbling in astrology, and denying the need and validity of the practice of infant baptism. His irate, argumentative tone, much like Bruno, made him plenty of enemies among both Protestants and Catholics. Having been burned in effigy after escaping from Roman authorities in Vienna, he fled to Geneva where he was spotted by reformer, John Calvin, who had vowed to God that the heretic, Servetus, would not leave the city alive! True to Calvin’s vow, it was not the Catholics who killed him, but the Geneva Council, who decided he should meet his maker by way of the flames.

The impenitent, stubborn Servetus soon lost his pride as the slow-burning flames engulfed his body. Blood curdling screams for mercy were rumored to be heard throughout the crowd of onlookers, and thus, ended the legacy of a brilliant mathematician and quite able physician.

Corrupt and scandalous

It does not take Solomonic wisdom to detect my running theme -- that Christianity is an albatross to humankind, this small list being scarcely a microscopic fraction of what could be cited to prove the point. It should be noted that these are modern and not-so-modern examples of Christian oppression. They emanate from Catholic and Protestant groups, and therefore, cannot be so easily wept under the rug of willful ignorance by suggesting that the above examples were merely the result of “false Christianity.” For centuries, believers have been disagreeing with each other, telling each other that they are wrong on this and that, and therein lies the problem when a believer tries to deny that Group X is a “True Christian” group, but not Group Y. The dispute on what constitutes “genuine” Christianity is as unsolvable a puzzle as partisan politics.

Christianity is not a religion of progress, nor is it a religion of open-mindedness. It does not tolerate, nor appreciate free inquiry. It condemns it outright (I Timothy 6:20-21). It sets up the classic clergy-laity system by setting up few as teachers (See James 3:1) and the rest as dumbbells, members who sit like wooden Indians and take in what their spiritual leaders tell them. Like the ancient mystery cults, which were so common in New Testament times and before, Christianity claims infallibility and thereby vilifies everyone and every school of thought to disagree with it…

“If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.” (2 John 1:10-11)

Without the aide of an evolving, progressive culture, Christianity would still have us in the dark ages, prattling off the pious nonsense of Tertullian…

“The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil's gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert-that is, death-even the Son of God had to die.”
- Tertullian, “On Women and Fallen Angels,” Book I

Without the aide of an evolving, progressive culture, Christianity would still have us forbidding surgery lest we defile a dead body and dishonor God. Mankind would have no doubt progressed medically beyond where we are today had we had access to biological experimentation 700 years ago. But in exchange for life-saving medical advances, we are given the sanctified decisions of church councils. In 1299 A.D., Pope Boniface VIII issued a papal bull that decreed the penalties for anyone with the ungodly gall to dissect a corpse -- excommunication and possible imprisonment. The hurt that this has done to the fields of anatomy and biology is quite incalculable, but I’m sure Boniface felt more than justified in this move and even felt he could support it with the Bible…

“Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime:” (Amos 2:1)

Christianity produces intolerance and suspicion and a dreaded, undying fear of change. As we have seen, it opposes science, it opposes medicine, it opposes logic, and even common sense. It makes man’s way difficult, burdened down with needless concerns and worries. It lays at the feet of society an alarmist mentality of spotting trouble where there is none and always being ready to reject sensible solutions to problems. These handful of examples, if nothing else, show us that when mankind is morally motivated and indoctrinated by a religion that claims to be “infallible truth,” the tendency to bind those “truths” on others always ends up being hurtful.

I find it interesting how Christians will so readily site Newton and Galileo as examples of Christians demonstrating scientific refinement, and then silently gloss over the long, cold, dark years of bibles being chained to pulpits, women being forced into convents, the mentally ill being locked up and tortured for fear of their being possessed, and forbidding marriages in local towns because of expressed defiance from the common people. The Church expressed her complete contentment with the “Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water” theory of elements as taught by the ancient Greeks, until the likes of Priestly and Scheele came along and set us straight on the matter with the groundbreaking discovery of oxygen. Christians are every bit as capable of anything everyone else is, but my question is, if Christianity promotes science and free inquiry, why did it take Christianity many centuries to produce only a handful of great thinkers? The answer is, it didn’t. Christianity has never directly produced a single freethinker. Mankind was finally breaking away from the stranglehold that the infamously oppressive Catholic Church had on the world, and with that came flourishing minds who could begin to experiment and question and think on their own without fear of the guillotine (or as much fear of it, at least). As the Church began to lose grip of the world, slowly but surely, objective learning could once again be exercised. Christianity remained, by far, the most dominant religion throughout Europe, so it would be a shock if at least some scientists and thinkers were not of the Christian Faith. But those good scientific minds were scientists and Christians – they were not scientists because they were Christians. We cannot give credit where credit is not due.

Christianity, unleashed on the world, has done many terrible things throughout the ages, far outweighing any good it managed to accomplish. Only when faith in the church’s infallible dogmas began to decline did we see increases in liberty. Today, the church contains only a glimmer of her former, snarling, mad dog image. To make better inroads infiltrating societies, she now uses the stealth approach.

This, however, is the freethinker’s perspective. It is not the believer’s perspective. The proud, white, middle-class, Protestant of today is utterly perplexed at how the freethought movement could dare suggest that Christianity is a vice against humanity. They live in their own Christianized world and attribute every little semblance of pleasantness and decency to their God. Christianity takes credit for everything even remotely good and runs away, like a caught-cheating husband, from any hint of bad publicity. As Woolsey Teller so eloquently put it…

“But leave it to Christianity to bedeck itself in stolen plumage. After blocking the cultural progress of the world for hundreds of years, it now poses as the champion of civilization, when, in plain truth, its behavior has been like that of the chameleon, changing colors and blending with the background whenever it is expedient. Let a people gather a few crumbs of culture in spite of Christianity and Christianity will claim the credit.

Christianity upheld slavery for over a thousand years, yet no sooner was emancipation achieved than it posed as "the black man's friend". It spat on woman suffrage, then, when woman's rights were won, it posed as the "liberator" of women. It fought tooth and nail the doctrine of evolution, but now assures us (from "liberal" pulpits, at least) that there never was any "real" conflict between science and religion. It opposed anesthesia in child-birth; it now proclaims it as God's "gift" to womankind. Before the war, it worshiped "the Prince of Peace"; it is now singing the song, "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.”
- Woolsey Teller, Essays of an Atheist, “Chameleonic Christianity.”

This is why Christianity stands condemned in the council of freethinking humanity as a mischievous trespasser, a migrant troublemaker, stirring up ruckus and unrest everywhere she goes. With useless regulations and hindrances, it does nothing but crush the life out of an observant, budding, and experimental society. Like a cruel, dry, second grade teacher who berates her students for innocently choosing to color and doodle outside of the lines, Christianity is a detriment to the progress of any society. Christianity operates by manipulation, befriending the mighty, seizing their power, and when finished using them, casting them out like spoiled goods. Just like a crooked, but sharply-dressed, well-poised politician, Christianity vainly points to a bright, appealing future, replete with promises of a Utopian tomorrow, while cleverly maneuvering their believers to keep from noticing the plentitude of horrendous injustices, allegations, and scandals of the past.

First posted 3/6/06

15
comments:

You seem to have lots of historical knowledge. I was wondering if you know how Atheists of the 16th and 17th century felt about the beginning of man. This was a period when the age of the earth was still thought to be very young (it still is by the nutcases today I know), and it was a period before evolution and dinosaur bones. They obviously didn't believe in God, but what did they think about creation, or didn't they think about it?

I'm sorry that you have this picture of christianity. Have you stepped foot in a christian church recently? Are you only interested in what "the church", namely the catholic church has done? Do you think that maybe the God christians worship today is not necessarily the god age old catholics preached about. Remember that in any religion or faith practice, peoples ideas and interpretations come into play. God has no control over that. Free will- unfortunately society has used that for their best interests, then and now. In all your studies, have you found anything worthwhile that isn't reflected in a negative light?

I am Christian. I don't think that being atheist means that you are a demon or that you should be burned at the stake. That is where your problem lies... You group all christians together and assume that we all feel the same way. Just as many christians feel the way you said, we don't ALL feel that way. If you find your peace in something else, so be it. I will think about you, pray for you and hope that maybe someday, you will come to know the comfort of a God who loves you in spite of any doubts you may have. Please, even though you have opinions, keep your mind open to the possibility that maybe we are all a little wrong. If the answers were supposed to be clear, then they would be. However, we are left with uncertainties that only faith can bring peace about. Good luck and God bless.

Do the Christians who believe atheists should still be killed have Bible versed that back them up? Maybe the problem isn't with the individual Christians, it's with Christian doctrine, and ultimately with the Bible itself.

Excellent collection of historical facts, Mr. Holman. We should not forget them.

Jennifer: "I don't think that being atheist means that you are a demon or that you should be burned at the stake. That is where your problem lies... You group all christians together and assume that we all feel the same way. Just as many christians feel the way you said, we don't ALL feel that way."

We can only go by what Christian doctrine teaches and what Christian believers say, Jennifer. Christian doctrine, as it is informed by the books of the Old and New Testaments, make it clear that non-belief in the Christian god as such is evil, and that "unbelievers" are "at enmity" with its god. There is no affirmation of man's right to exist for his own sake in Christian doctrine, and non-Christians are referred to as despicable reprobates which "the Father" will cast into an eternal hell to be tormented for ever, all for simply governing their minds by their conscience, honestly admitting that they do not believe the hocus-pocus of these religious teachings. The bible promotes a primitive philosophy, one which is unfit for man's life on earth (the ideal it offers is life after death in a magic kingdom beyond the grave), and which nowhere prohibits enslavement or the initiation of the use of force. It teaches that witches, rebellious children and worshippers of rival gods be taken without the city and stoned. Many believers today (I can provide quotes if you like) in fact advocate the execution of "heretics." In essence, this hideous worldview views the honest man as an enemy, having divided men into two opposing collectives: the chosen vs. the damned. Christians of course, having accepted this false dichotomy, prefer to number themselves among the chosen while apparently being satisfied by viewing everyone else as "damned." Meanwhile, when it comes to providing you as an individual with the rational principles you need in order to guide your choices and actions, Christianity leaves you out in the cold. Consequently you have to borrow from wisdom of "the natural man" as you endeavor to live in his realm the only way one can: on its terms. So why be a Christian?

On the other hand, many Christians will point out that they do not agree with other Christians on many of these issues, thus underscoring the fact that there is no uniformity in the Christian body. Mt. 12:25 provides Christianity's own epitaph in this regard: "And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand." Again, why be a Christian?

Jennifer: "If you find your peace in something else, so be it."

I live, move and have my being in my Self, and I am wholly at peace with this fact. But many Christians are not prepared to resign themselves to the matter with a mere "so be it." They lust after authority over other minds, for they are threatened by their very existence. They want to control what they fear, which is why they formulate such elaborate systems of theology. By defining their god to the most infinitesimal degree, they effectively put their god in a straightjacket where it can do them no harm.

Jennifer: "Please, even though you have opinions, keep your mind open to the possibility that maybe we are all a little wrong."

Indeed, there was a time when I was gravely wrong, Jennifer. Instead of pretending to be born again, I recovered myself and grew up. Now I know I'm right, and this really bothers some people.

Jennifer: "If the answers were supposed to be clear, then they would be. However, we are left with uncertainties that only faith can bring peace about."

You're getting warmer: faith thrives on ignorance. This much is certain.

"I don't think that being atheist means that you are a demon or that you should be burned at the stake. That is where your problem lies... You group all christians together and assume that we all feel the same way."

Maybe. But in fairness, the fire and brimstone kind is usually all we hear from.

"I will think about you, pray for you and hope that maybe someday, you will come to know the comfort of a God who loves you in spite of any doubts you may have."

I assume given the tone of your posts that you mean well. However, this is very insulting. Don't assume that because we are no longer theists that we never gave it a shot. Personally, I studied for many years. That I am now an atheist should give you a clue as to how my seeking god turned out.

"If the answers were supposed to be clear, then they would be. However, we are left with uncertainties that only faith can bring peace about."

This kind of thinking I will never understand. How does cold comfort ever bring peace? Thanks, but I'd rather rely on what's real.

I fully agree with your comments of Christianity. God agrees with you also. The so called Christians whether they be Catholic. Protestant, Jehovah Witness, Mormons on and on ad infinitum have serious catasrophic error in the interpretation of Scripture. When God is angry in the Scripture it is not with the people outside the church it is with the leaders of the so called Christian church. The book of Revelation is all about the corrupt church. The church itself is the anti christ. It is the whore that Scripture talks about so much. The book of Proverbs is all about the Christian church of today. She is the adultress on every corner. The Scripture was written as a spiritual book not a literal book. God did this to trick these so called self proclaimed wise theologians and preachers and teachers. All through Scripture it tells those who understand to proclaim that she is a LIAR. The so called Christian church is the cause of all the worlds problems. She did not proclaim the message that is very clear in the New Testament. #1 The whole entire world will be in the eternal righteous kingdom of God, except the lying leaders of the church they will be thrust out. #2 SIN is a dead issue should not even be mentioned by a true believer, but all the church does is condemn people as sinners when everyone in God's eyes and the true believers eyes is a saint. A true believer sees the whole world as saved no matter if they believe it or not. For 2000 years we have not had truth coming out of the church. I go to no church but follow the command of Revelation 18:4 Come out of HER my people. If you want to know more of what Scripture really is saying: Please let's talk

John wrote: "What some Christians fail to see is that when they demonize us and treat us disrespectfully at Debunking Christianity they have ceased to see us as persons too."

You are not observing anything new or alarming - if you believed Jesus, you would already know that the seed of the Pharisees demonstrates itsself in the form of moral conceit and you would be prepared to love them as enemies!

God's enlightenment includes the maturation/progress of faith throughout the history of mankind - God's grace allows for ppl to respond at various levels of faith developement.

God's grace may seem troublesome for those with an experience or perspective of domineering and abusively empowered authority- e.g., those who expect immediate and total compliance -

BEAJ writes: "I was wondering if you know how Atheists of the 16th and 17th century felt about the beginning of man. . . They obviously didn't believe in God, but what did they think about creation, or didn't they think about it?"

The rediscovery of Epicurean philosophy around that time provided an alternative cosmology for atheists to play with. They had Lucretius' speculations about the origins of Earth and life in the fifth book of his poem De rerum natura, for example.

BTW, Lucretius, who lived about a century before Paul, falsifies Paul's statement that "the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." Lucretius, followed Epicurus, inferred invisible atoms, not invisible things of a creator god, as the ultimate metaphysical reality.

Postscript: As far as the biblical references (2 John 1:10-11) cited in the post;

God does not condone elitism -- ppl who perceive these verses to mean that we ought to marginalize ppl are blind to the ways that sin accomplishes that goal. Sinfulness is what causes ppl to cooperate with the habits of elitism and marginalizing others.

God doesn't enable, promote or assist ppl in remaining lost or in the dark about what it means to be a caring, human hearted person.

There is a difference between being in fellowship and loving one's enemies - if one has been saved by grace, then one no longer desires to give license to another to remain lost in the dark.

Strictly speaking the 1722 practice of inoculation was dangerous. It was deliberate infection with smallpox under controlled conditions (i.e., being in good health and with good nursing care around) and it could kill or badly scar (though the odds were better than catching smallpox in uncontrolled circumstances perhaps when conditions weren't so good). Vaccination, the deliberate infection with cowpox, only came about in the late 1700s. Also clergy came down on both sides; Rev. Cotton Mather was a big proponent of inoculation in Massachusetts.